A reality television show documenting a heroin addict’s recovery learns that their subject may be a victim of demonic possession.

Synopsis:

October 05, 2012 – The addict intervention reality TV show “Step Inside Recovery” begins filming an episode on heroin-addicted teenager Carson Morris. Suzanne Tully is the producer, Tim is the primary camera operator, and Jason Hurwitz works the second camera as a production assistant.

Jason and Carson take a liking to one another and strike up a connection off camera. While filming B-roll in Carson’s bedroom, Jason and Tim discover books on demonic possession.

Despite not being Catholic, Carson’s parents Beth and Steve talk about their daughter’s admittance into Eastlake Academy, a Catholic high school where Carson became friends with fellow student McKee Littlefield. The family’s pastor, Reverend James Foley, discusses an incident involving an uncontrollable outburst from Carson following services at First Presbyterian Church in Westchester, CA.

With initial interviews concluded, Dr. Dean Pretiss arrives at the Morris home to stage an intervention with Carson’s friends and family. While McKee reads her personal appeal out loud to the group, Carson goes into a rage and stuffs the paper into McKee’s mouth before retreating upstairs. Dr. Pretiss makes a private appeal to Carson. She agrees to accept professional treatment after making a claim to Dr. Pretiss that she is possessed by a demon.

Dr. John Kordis admits Carson into Hope Center to begin her rehabilitation. Carson continues claiming that she only uses heroin to control her demon. She begins showing signs that she is telling the truth by speaking in a foreign language and revealing private information about fellow patients during group therapy sessions.

Jason is the only person who takes Carson’s claims seriously, while Dr. Kordis and the other crewmembers continually dismiss Jason’s protests. Jason confronts Shanti, the facility’s nurse, about a makeshift cross found in Carson’s room. Shanti reveals that she previously battled demonic possession in her home country of Cameroon. As a test, Jason secretly puts holy water in the therapy room. Carson drinks it and violently spews blood while lashing out at those attempting to restrain her.

Jason visits Carson privately and she asks him to get her heroin, claiming it is the only way to control the entity. Jason refuses. Carson becomes possessed and tries unsuccessfully to seduce Jason, ultimately biting at his fingers in a savage manner.

Jason, Suzanne, and Tim go looking for Carson outside during the night. They find Shanti fleeing a scene where Carson is covered in blood and restrained against a tree as part of an exorcism gone wrong. Dr. Kordis fires Shanti the next day.

Distressed at her worsening condition, Jason reluctantly shoots up Carson with heroin. When Dr. Kordis discovers the needle mark on her arm, Carson is expelled and sent back home to her parents. Jason is also fired from the show, but he continues investigating Carson’s condition on his own.

Recalling how Carson attacked her high school friend during the intervention, Jason presses McKee for another interview. McKee finally reveals that her friends used to tease Carson that they were secretly devil worshippers. McKee shows Jason a recording made at a faux occult ceremony where Carson inadvertently became possessed by a demon named Moloch.

Jason acquires a copy of Codex Daemonis, the book used by the teens during their ritual, and does his own research on exorcisms before forcing his way into the Morris home. Looking to get their video camera back, Suzanne and Tim follow Jason. Beth Morris finally admits that Carson suffered from a chain of abuse that started with her father’s alcoholism.

Jason attempts to exorcise Carson, but she breaks free and flees the house in the darkness. Tim finds her outside where she brandishes a knife before murdering him. Carson goes back inside and slits her mother’s throat. Just as Jason’s final appeal to Carson appears to calm her down, Steve enters with a shotgun and kills his daughter. Steve then turns the gun on himself. The demon then manifests inside Jason, prompting him to strangle Suzanne with his bare hands.

Review:

Reality TV shows about addiction interventions are accustomed to featuring wayward souls battling demons of the figurative variety. It is just as common for the addicted to assign spurious blame for their troubles, including making claims of being inhabited by evils beyond their control. For the crew of “Step Inside Recovery,” the tortured tale of teenage heroin addict Carson Morris takes a literal turn into devil confrontation territory when Carson’s assertion that she is possessed turns out to be more than a junkie’s crazed delusion.

This development comes as a horrifying shock to Carson’s Christian family and to the incredulous crew recording what was supposed to be a young girl’s rehab facility recovery. For an audience watching the tumult unfold from the other side of the lens, it comes as a belabored plot point in a predictable movie certain to drown in a sea of similar takes on a straightforward story of possession, exorcism, and projectile vomiting.

“Inner Demons” is far from the first demonic possession thriller to format itself as “found footage,” arriving four years after “The Last Exorcism” (review here) and two years after “The Devil Inside” (review here). It’s not even the first “found footage” possession horror film of 2014, sharing that overcrowded space alongside “Chasing the Devil” (review here) and “The Possession of Michael King” (review here).

The hook is that “Inner Demons” is presented with the premise of beginning as a faux reality television episode. In the film’s director’s chair sits Seth Grossman, working in somewhat familiar territory, having previously served as a producer for a handful of “Intervention” episodes on A&E. “Inner Demons” isn’t unique in this regard either. “Delivery: The Beast Within” (review here) employs the same conceit for its demonic pregnancy “found footage” film, and does so with greater success in both the scares and believability departments.

The “Intervention”-esque styling does more to hinder than it does to help. “Inner Demons” is so committed to its angle that half of the runtime is allotted to fulfilling the reality TV illusion. Aside from the usual video corruption flickers when the evil presence flashes, or causes Carson to growl in strange voices, it takes two-thirds of the film for someone other than the TV crew’s neophyte P.A. to consider Carson may be telling the truth. That’s a long wait for the onscreen characters to play catch up to something the viewer knows is coming before the movie even begins.

Ancillary characters are introduced at length in group therapy counseling sessions only to disappear before contributing any meaningful purpose. Plentiful behind-the-scenes footage of candid moments in between interviews seems purposed mainly to establish insufferable personalities for the group of backbiting crewmembers and arrogant mental health professionals. Glenn Gers’ screenplay puts more emphasis on selling the setup than it does on engaging with its story.

The reality show veneer is undercut by acting that is mostly good, but comes from a cast of players that look like headshots in human form instead of authentic friends, family, or film crew professionals. Christopher Parker as Carson’s father, for instance, is very good at swelling his eyes with deep-rooted, choked up trouble, but there is always a twinkle of stagecraft-inspired intensity. Lara Vosburgh is tough to rate as Carson, since the movie isn’t interested in developing her second identity beyond a direction to sneer with head down and eyes up.

When an end title card crediting Michelle Trachtenberg as the Costume Designer provides the first instance of surprise and alert eyes, that says a lot about a movie’s inability to pique a viewer’s interest. For the record, IMDB alters this credit to Mishka Trachtenberg. Buffy’s little sister has not in fact picked up a needle and thread in a professional capacity.

An errant soccer ball kicked against a window and a popping light bulb provide the movie’s best scares, and those are moments not even contextual to the story. “Inner Demons” ends on an unexpectedly grisly climax, but the road it takes getting there is filled with half-formed ideas about the nature of Carson’s possession (something about high-schoolers goofing around with a grimoire), and the typical clichés culled from every demonic spirit movie since “The Exorcist” (speaking in Latin, inexplicably knowing personal secrets, a foreigner with folklore from the homeland, etc.) Everything “Inner Demons” sets out to do has not only been done before, it has been done better.